Overview

Lysine — your body refuses to make it, but demands it anyway.

L-lysine is an ‘essential amino acid’ — our bodies need it
but cannot make it, and so it must be obtained from food or supplements.
An average male adult requires about 37 mg of L-lysine per day
per kilogram of body weight — about 2.7 grams/day for someone
weighing 73 kg (160 lbs). This is the amount needed to avoid a
serious lysine deficiency. Larger amounts are needed for optimum
health.

L-lysine’s popularity as a nutritional supplement stems from studies suggesting that this amino acid helps to prevent

outbreaks of herpes simplex (1000 mg three times per day)

osteoporosis

anxiety (3000 mg/day)

insulin deficiency

low growth hormone levels (1500 mg/day plus 1500 mg/day L-arginine)

inadequate muscle strength.

A shortage of lysine can cause

fatigue

nausea

dizziness

loss of appetite

agitation

bloodshot eyes

slow growth, anemia

reproductive disorders.

If you suffer chronically from any of these, it makes sense to try a lysine supplement — it’s a quick, easy, inexpensive,
and risk-free thing to do. If that doesn’t work, then you can move on to a more dramatic treatment.

Read L-Lysine Monograph

L-lysine is an ‘essential amino acid’ — that is, it is needed
by the human body but not made there, and must be obtained from
food or supplements. A male adult typically requires about 37
mg of L-lysine per day per kilogram of bodyweight1
— about 2.7 grams/day for someone weighing 73 kg (160 lbs). This is the
amount needed to avoid lysine-deficiency ailments
in a healthy person. More ambitious goals — beyond the mere
avoidance of overt deficiencies — may require larger amounts than
37 mg/kg/day.

What we can’t tell you

In the U.S. and some other industrialized countries,
government agencies like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration have
adopted
censorship as a method for intensifying their control over the
supplement industry and its customers. Thus, FDA regulations
prohibit us from telling you that any of our products are
effective as medical treatments, even if they are, in fact,
effective.

Accordingly, we will limit our discussion of L-lysine to a
brief summary of recent lysine research, and let you draw your
own conclusions about what medical conditions it may be
effective in treating.

L-lysine’s popularity as a nutritional supplement stems from
studies suggesting that this amino acid decreases the recurrence
rate of people infected with

Herpes viruses

Several clinical trials conducted in the 1980s showed that
lysine supplementation at about 1000 mg three times per day reduced
the frequency of herpes outbreaks and decreased the severity of
symptoms associated with recurrences. Lower doses, down to
about 1000 mg once per day, showed a lesser but measurable
benefit.3,4,5

Other studies have shown that the herpes virus responds
differently to different concentrations of the amino acids lysine
and arginine. When the ratio of L-lysine to L-arginine is high,
viral replication and the cytopathogenicity of herpes simplex
virus have been found to be inhibited.2
This implies that to inhibit the herpes virus, arginine levels should
be kept low.

Growth hormone (GH) and muscle strength

Dual amino-acid supplementation with L-lysine and L-arginine
increases growth hormone levels without the need for large doses
of either supplement. Studies using 1200-1500 mg of each
supplement showed that significant increases in GH levels take place
in the blood from 30 to 90 minutes after consumption.11,12
It appears that the best time to take arginine+lysine is when one is
resting — not when one is about to exercise. Exercise
itself causes growth hormone levels to rise, and the
supplements do not push GH levels much higher than this.12
The implication of this evidence is that, with respect to GH levels,
the supplement combination simulates the effects of
exercise during non-exercise periods.

A clinical trial in which elderly women were given a daily
supplement consisting of 1.5 g lysine + 5 g arginine + 2 g
beta-hydroxy-beta-methylbutyrate
(HMB) showed “a 17% improvement in the ‘get-up-and-go’
functionality test … increased limb circumference, leg strength,
handgrip
strength, and positive trends in fat-free mass.”6
The HMB part of the combination is thought to slow the breakdown of
muscle protein7
— the lysine-arginine part is the muscle-growth component which is not
dependent on HMB for its effects.

Osteoporosis and bone fractures

A therapeutic role of amino acids L-lysine (Lys) and
L-arginine (Arg) in osteoporosis and fracture healing has been
demonstrated
both by cell culture studies and studies in lab animals.9,10,13
A clinical trial conducted in 1994 demonstrated “a more marked
increment in BMD [bone mass density] in subjects treated with
arginine-lysine-lactose, a greater reduction in painful
symptoms ...” than in subjects treated with a lactose placebo.14

Despite these promising results of more than ten years ago,
no further clinical trials have been conducted — neither by drug
companies, nor through government funding — to develop
Lysine/Arginine treatments for bone fractures or osteoporosis. The
reasons are not hard to guess: Big Pharma is interested in
developing blockbuster new drugs, not unpatentable supplements;
and government medical research establishments are run by
doctor-bureaucrats who oppose therapies that are available to patients
without their having to visit doctors and ‘cross their palms
with silver’ to get a prescription. But in the USA, thanks to
the nutritional supplement act passed by Congress in 1994,
people with bone fractures or osteoporosis can buy both L-lysine
and L-arginine any time they want to. These are safe amino acid
supplements that are far less expensive than prescription
drugs, and require no time-consuming, wranglesome visits to
over-priced physicians.

Insulin and hyperglycemia

Preliminary studies indicate that lysine consumption
correlates with insulin responses — higher lysine consumption during
a meal appears to stimulate insulin release.15
This work suggests that lysine supplementation at mealtime may improve
the utilization of dietary sugars and fats, and discourage
tissue-damaging episodes of hyperglycemia.

Anxiety

A recent study of 29 subjects with “relatively high trait
anxiety” showed that dual supplementation with L-lysine and L-arginine
(3 g each/day) caused a normalization of hormonal responses
during psychosocial stress — i.e., the pattern of stress-related
hormones that high-anxiety people experience during stressful
experiencies (such as public speaking) was modified by the supplements
so that it resembled that experienced by low-anxiety people.8

Conclusion

Are L-lysine supplements useful for the conditions and
purposes mentioned above? We aren’t allowed to tell you, so you should
take a look at some of the references cited here, and then
decide for yourself.